The disciplinary boundaries of Canadian identity after September 11: civilizational identity, multiculturalism, and the challenge of anti-imperialist feminism.

• Author: Arat-Koc, Sedef

Introduction

THIS ARTICLE AIMS TO EXPLORE THE WAYS IN WHICH CANADIAN IDENTITY HAS BEEN reconfigured in the post-September 11 period. There has been a campaign to increasingly define Canadian identity along civilizational lines, as part of "Western civilization" and in a "clash of civilizations" framework. This reconfiguration seeks to situate Canada internationally as an unconditional partner of the United States in foreign policy; internally, it has led to a re-whitening of Canadian identity and increased marginalization of its nonwhite minorities. Such an emphasis in national identity may appear to be a retreat from multiculturalism as the policy in effect in Canada since the 1970s; alternatively, it may represent a crystallization of certain inequalities, as well as inherent ambiguities and tensions, present in liberal multiculturalism even in the best of times. The focus of this article on the violent political reaction to a speech Sunera Thobani made in October 2001 reflects on notions of Canadian national identity and belonging in the post-September 11 period.

Thobani is the former president of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women--an umbrella group representing most Canadian feminist and women's organizations--and a professor of Women's Studies at the University of British Columbia. Her keynote speech at a women's conference in Ottawa critiqued U.S. foreign policy, warned about its implications for women, and urged feminists to play a leading role in stopping heightened U.S. imperialism and militarism. Instantly, the right-wing press and politicians reacted negatively to the speech. Beyond criticism of her views, Thobani became the target of a demonization campaign and vicious personal attacks. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police opened an investigation of her, which was later dropped, after receiving an "anonymous complaint" that the speech might have violated the criminal code as it involved a "hate-crime" against "the American people." The Thobani incident serves as a litmus case that helps to make sense of the disciplinary boundaries of "Canadian" identity in a period of crisis and change. It demonstrates a new conceptual emphasis regarding national identity and a crystallization of the already existing precarity of national belonging for people of color in the liberal framework of Canadian multiculturalism. Beyond revealing the exclusions to national belonging, the case shows how the boundaries of national identity and national belonging serve as disciplinary discourses to establish or reinstate social and political control.

In the discussion below, I outline the political and ideological campaign to rearticulate Canadian identity post-September 11. I then summarize the reactions to Thobani's speech and explain how they can be read as attempts to clarify and secure the boundaries of Canada conceived in civilizational terms. Several factors account for the violent reaction to Thobani's speech. Besides showing the rigidity of the newly configured boundaries of Canadian identity and the precariousness of national belonging and limited political citizenship for nonwhite minorities, the Thobani case reveals which types of feminism were acceptable in this period and why anti-imperialist feminism threatened the logic of civilizational discourse.

Reconfiguration of Canadian Identity as Civilizational Identity

Following September 11, the definition and boundaries of Canadian national identity and belonging were reconfigured. Though the alternative voices raised, questions asked, and reservations expressed about this reconfiguration limited it to a hegemonic attempt, right-wing politicians, editors, and columnists in the corporate media largely succeeded in defining the parameters of the discourse on identity and belonging. Pursuing a discourse of civilizational differences and civilizational conflict, certain right-wing groups were especially empowered to define Canadian identity as unquestionably and unambiguously a part of "the West." Invoking civilizational superiority via references to a "Western" identity gave this configuration some novelty given the strong antiracist challenges in Canada's recent history. The "new," however, was old in other ways. This reconfiguration revealed certain tensions that were inherent in liberal Canadian multiculturalism from its inception, and it represented a new step in the heightened racism that dominated Canadian discourses on immigration and refugee policy in the 1990s. It therefore involved a confirmation, crystallization, and rigidification of the preexisting implicit boundaries of a white national identity and belonging.

A renewal of nationalism took place in post-September 2001 Canada. This "nationalism" is transnational in nature, a white nationalism confirming that some Canadians belong in "Western civilization." In Canada--as well as in Australia, the United States, and many European countries--this new, reconfigured notion of the nation (based on a "clash of civilizations" perspective) in effect jettisoned those of Arab and Muslim background from their place in Western nations and "Western civilization," and made precarious the national belonging and political citizenship of many other Canadians of color.

For the U.S. administration, September 11 represented an attack on the United States and "the West." Several Western leaders quickly interpreted the object of the attack as "Western civilization" and its values of freedom and democracy. Mainstream media and many politicians in "the Western" world played an active role in explaining and discursively framing the September 11, 2001, attacks in terms of a "clash of civilizations." (1) The term was popularized through Samuel Huntington's 1996 book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. Huntington borrowed the term from Bernard Lewis, who had used the term in the immediate post-Cold War context while speculating about sources of world conflict that might replace the ideologies and regimes of the Cold War. Lewis ranks among the most influential writers on Middle Eastern politics and history, but his prominence derives not from his brilliance or the accuracy of his analyses, but from his proximity to U.S. foreign policymaking circles. His 1990 Atlantic Monthly article identified Muslim "culture" and "civilization" as forming "the roots of Muslim rage." (2)

According to the "clash of civilizations" thesis, international relations in the post-Cold War era would be defined not by differences in socioeconomic systems or ideologies, but by a potential "clash" due to differences in cultures or "civilizations." In political analysis, the main influence of this thesis has been to substitute politics and history with essentialized, decontextualized, and dehistoricized notions of "culture" and "civilization." Even though Huntington's book, in the years following its publication, was widely criticized for its poor classification of "civilizations" and a weak understanding of history, in the days following September 11, it was praised as ingenious, brilliant, and visionary. The events spurred a rise in Huntington's book to the bestsellers list--five years after its publication--and Bernard Lewis' new book, What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response (2002), drew a popular readership that reached far beyond an academic circle of people interested in Middle Eastern history. An image of Islam as a "culture" and "civilization" innately and historically at odds with "Western" values, which found expression in both books, came to be used as the common-sense explanation for what had happened.

The notion of "the West" found in the "clash of civilizations" perspective excludes other civilizations, as well as the histories and cultures of "non-Western" diasporas living in "the West." Thus, in effect, the redefinition of Canadian identity as part of "the West" implies a re-whitening of Canadian identity after decades of multiculturalism. As Gilbert Achcar (2002: 26) has argued, given the glaring absence of any meaningful reaction to events affecting far larger numbers of human beings in different parts of the word, the intense emotions generated by the destruction and pain of September 11 concerned more than general "humanism" or compassion. Rather, it was a "narcissistic compassion" focused only or mainly on "people like us." The "us" hailed in the statement, "we are all Americans now," which was frequently repeated in Canada after September 11, seemed to evoke identification only with those associated--in terms of "race" and class status--with a specific "way of life." It excluded those outside the U.S. from intense emotions of compassion, as well as the many people of color and undocumented workers who died in the twin towers. Thus, although many Canadians may have seen their compassion as simply an expression of sorrow and solidarity with what was perceived as a victimized, terrorized neighbor, being "all Americans now," as articulated and shaped by the media, meant identification with a white, bourgeois U.S. and the imperial power it represents.

Three elements are important in this reconfiguration of Canadian identity. First, the redefinition of Canadian identity along civilizational lines, as part of "the West," represents a renewal of racialized myths of Canada, an explicit reassertion of white settler identity that had otherwise been challenged--with debatable degrees of success--by lengthy aboriginal and antiracist struggles and blurred by three decades of multiculturalism. Second, beyond an emphasis on white, European identity, it specifically involves identification with U.S. imperialism and U.S. power. Third, Canadian identity as a Western civilizational identity entails claims to cultural superiority over the others of "the West" and an acknowledgement of subordinate civilizational membership characterized by a dependent relationship with the United States...